aLTY1 - 


' 
i\/ 5 a a « 
(y : =f ’ 
’ . ~~ ¥ 


World’s Student Christian Federation. 
European Student Relief Series No. 4. 


“FORESTRY AND FOOD.” 


Somewhere in Europe, 


September, 1920. 
Dear BILL, 


When the appeal was made in college last term for the students in 
Central Europe, you remember I was amongst the sceptics, and heckled 
the speaker all I knew how. I wanted to know why, under the shining 
sun, our fellows, who are lots of them earning their way through, should 
subscribe to support a lot of lazy beggars, who didn’t seem to have an 
idea of working, and who, as far as I was concerned, might starve. 
Well! I may as well own up—I’m converted, and that soundly. What 
converted me? Chiefly a few days spent at the Student Wood-cutting 
Camp at Tulbinger Kogel in the Wiener Wald. You know my dad is 
persistently interested in the Federation and its doings, so this vacation 
he gave me a cheque with orders to go and see conditions in Central 
Europe for myself. “Two days in Vienna were quite enough to convince 
me that the starvation of students there was a grim reality, and quite the 
best thing I’ve seen in the way of Relief Work is this camp, one result 
of the combined effort of the Federation and the Friends’ Relief Mission 
on behalf of Vienna students. 

The scheme was born in the brain of Mrs. Warner, the Camp Com- 
mandant; her notion was that students might earn money and health for 
themselves, by feiling trees in summer to supply the Vienna Hospitals 
with cheap fuel in the coalless winter ahead. A Baron conveniently 
appeared, who had been ordered by the Austrian Government to clear 
part of his forests, and grow corn, to increase the food output; he pro- 
vided the ground. Next, the Austrian War Office turned up trumps and 
tents and crockery and pots and pans and other thing's on loan, including 
a Field Kitchen captured by the Austrians from the Russians. The food 
came mostly from Holland, collected by the Dutch Student Movement 
for Vienna, while the Friends produced fresh meat once a_ week, 
vegetables and fruit. Behold the Camp equipped; would the students 
play up? Some folks said ‘‘ No,’’ but not a bit of it: lots applied, 
the only trouble being that even a very lenient medical exam. meant that 
40 per cent. were rejected as completely unfit. Anyhow, on August 6th the 
Camp started, with 45 men and 12 women, mostly Austrians, but also 


a few Poles, Roumanians, and Czechs. 


The daily programme was as follows :— 

6-30—Breakfast (cocoa and bread). 

7-—Work begins. The men cut down trees, divide into metre 
lengths and stack in cubic metre piles. The girls (those who are 
not on kitchen duties) cut branches into metre lengths and tie into 
bundles. 

1o—Lunch (bread, cheese or bacon), eaten in the woods. 

10-30 to 12-30—Continuation of work. 

1—Dinner (soup and one other dish—meat corned and fresh, 
two or three times a week). 

4——Tea (bread or biscuits and jam or peanut butter). 

7—Supper {one dish of cereals or vegetables). 

10o—Lights out. 

Not very strenuous hours! But most of them have no stamina, and 
many had weak lungs and hearts, fevers and rheumatism, from war con- 
ditions. It wasn’t safe to overwork them, and work in rain was impos- 
sible. Are they made of sugar? No! But scarcely any have two shirts 
or two pairs of boots, and can’t change if wet! 

It certainly fattened them! It was rather pathetic to hear the way 
they talked about the food for hours on end, and most of them delighted 
openly in a full tummy. The first day they had fresh meat, few had 
tasted it for months, and it produced a colour and a heat in their systems, 
which was obvious in their faces. The unusual sufficiency of food made 
them greedier than their health would stand, and many had boils as a 
result, but the conditions soon produced a wonderful fairy-tale difference. 
Chests expanded, faces filled out, muscles toughened, weights went up, 
energy increased (noise also!), and lethargy: vanished. 

The sun was called to aid the cure, and the rash visitor, strolling 
round on a fine afternoon, would come upon ‘‘ sun bath parade,’’ rows 
of copper-coloured savages, in bathing drawers or shorts, sleeping or 
reading according to taste. 

Originally the women students were to do the cooking; but a few 
days of this system played such havoc with their tummies that a profes- | 
sional cook was engaged! How they did eat! The helpings were enor- 
mous, but nothing was ever left over! what they didn’t eat at table, 
they consumed later in their tents—‘‘ there’s a bad time coming, boys.”’ 
Poor chaps, they were loth to face starvation again, when camp closed— 
though, to let them down lightly, they each got a packet of provisions 
to take down with them—-soup tablets, oatmeal, pork and beans, cocoa, 
coffee, a loaf, biscuits, chocolate and jam. Every man had the chance, 
too, of buying his ground sheet (mackintosh, lined with flannel), and a 


new shirt and new boots—Kr. 300 the lot, i.e., less than ten shillings, 
Enelish money. : 


They didn’t only work and eat and sleep. There was lots going on 
besides—football doesn’t seem to appeal to them, but we had tug-of-war, 
tricks, simple games, fireworks and concerts. We’d a Jazz Band, and 
an official Kapelle Meister—and as for singing, you’d only to start them 
and they’d go on for hours. I’m not sure that the international touch 
wasn’t the most valuable thing in the whole show—there were visitors 
from India, Japan, U.S.A., Australia, Canada, New Zealand, England, 
Scotland and Ireland, as well as your humble servant. Did we all 
work? Well, rather! the C.O. saw to that. The men were fond of 
talking of other countries and race differences, and there was a general 
sense that the camp was the work of international good fellowship. 

How much did they really do? Well! about 150 tons of wood were 
cut and stacked in the tive weeks; not bad, when you consider weather, 
unfitness and short hours. Of course, there were a few rabbits, who 
slacked, and put a severe strain on the C.O.’s German vocabulary; but 
the energetic earned Kr. 200 a week, and a few Hercules Kr. 4oo. Some 
voluntarily did over-time. The Foresters, who superintended operations, 
were altogether satisfied with the work done. 

This means a lot, for these very Foresters originally threatened to 
go on strike, if miserable students from the city were introduced into 
their forests, and only the prompt action of the highly interested British 
Reparations Committee, in commandeering a bit of the forest, saved the 
situation for the C.O. and her gang. 

So the Vienna Hospitals are 150 tons of wood to the good this 
winter, and the Vienna public will eat the bread the Baron will grow on 
-his cleared ground! And the students have put by a reserve of strength 
and money against the cruel winter that’s coming, and, better still, have 
learnt to work with their hands and like it! 

Personally, I’ve never met a scheme which did so much good to so 
many different people! It’s a perfect Omnibus of Varied Welfare! . 

Well! that’s what got me! And that’s the kind of sane, sound 
self-help that our European Student Relief Committee will promote else- 
where. What the Friends and the Federation have began this summer 
we mean to continue. All sorts of interesting schemes are in the wind 
But I'll tell you all about them 


when we are up again. You may as well know your fate first as last: 


for getting students on the land and 





every man-jack of our crowd is going to be roped in to do the hardest 
work of his life in the ’Varsity campaign on behalf of the Federation 
European Relief Scheme! So that’s that. 

Ever yours, 


DOWTIN G. THOMAS. 


P.S.—I find.that the Federation has been at this game for years 
past. When I was going through Switzerland I saw something of the 
Student Employment Bureaus, run in connection with the Student Chris- 
tian Movement there, for the benefit chiefly, of the many hundreds of — 
foreign students stranded there through the war. 


In August, 1914, immediately after the declaration of war, the Neu- 
chatel local Christian Association made arrangements for a group of 
about twenty-five women students to work by the day picking peas on a 
large vegetable farm situated on a picturesque island. In Geneva, the 
secretary for men-students inaugurated a most interesting experiment 
in the form’ of an agricultural colony. The Jewish students, who 
proposed this to him, said that they had in mind as the ultimate objective, 
the preparation for an agricultural colony in Palestine ‘‘ after the War.’’ 


In spite of the extraordinary difficulty of getting jobs for foreigners 
there, men students have found employment in carpentry, canvassing, 
farming, work in vineyards, in barbers’ shops, in messenger service, 
as chauffeurs, hotel porters, concierges and guides for tourists. One 
graduate with two Ph.D. degrees was driving a cart and delivering heavy 
boxes for a firm whose employees threatened to strike, when they heard 
an office position had been offered to a Slav. So he stuck it out as a 
carter, till he won the confidence of masters and men, and was offered an 
architect’s desk in the same firm. 


Women students have done waiting, sewing, knitting, dress- 
making, embroidery, making preserves, picking and drying vegetables, 
millinery, fine ironing, reading aloud, convalescent nursing, telephone 
operating, taking children to walk, and supervising lessons and games, 
taking charge of hotel linen, canvassing, collecting bills for landladies. 
Both men and women have done teaching, tyvpewriting, stenography, 
laboratory and library work, translation, piano accompaniments, lessons 
in music and skating and languages. 


Not a bad record, is it? 


WORLD'S STUDENT CHRISTIAN FEDERATION 
EUROPEAN STUDENT RELIEF. 


JOHN R. MOTT, CONRAD HOFFMANN, RUTH ROUSE, 
ae Chairman, Executive Secretary, Publicity Secretary, 
347, Madison Avenue, 3 rue General Dufour, 28, Lancaster Road, 


New York City. Geneva, Switzerland. Wimbledon, London, S.W. 19. 


